Latest post of the previous page:
Part of the problem is that, globally, there is no supreme Islamic authority - like the Pope for Catholics. I have read the "The Word" is open to interpretation by the faithful because of a lot of metaphor and shifts in values over the centuries (the Bible suffers from this to a degree). So there is no person who can excommunicate erring Muslims.getreal wrote:I'm no politician. Philosophy makes my ears bleed and my grasp of politics is scant. But if we are fighting an ideology, how are bombs going to do that?
France claim more than 2000 French citizens have left France and joined IS. I don't know th figures for the uk, but the jihadi bride recruiter from Glasgow was in a close friends daughters class at school. How do these people become radicalised? How can we prevent this? What are the Muslim "authorities" doing to stop this?
I believe in Denmark, everyone returning from fighting is "de briefed" and used to help educate young people about the truth of this conflict. What do the uk and France do with returnees? Does the uk even know if they have returned?
A major part of th blame for the radicalisation of young people in the west lies at the feet of Muslims themselves. What are they doing to protest the reputation of their faith? I see nor hear any evidence of a concerted effort on the part of the faithful to help stop the radicalisation of their youth.
"The majority of Muslims are peaceful" they say. So why do they stay so quiet on the hijacking of their religion?
There seems to be evidence that the more peaceful Muslims, in Britain at least, are doing what they can to prevent radicalisation, but that may not always be a lot and puts them in greater danger, being seen as "traitors" or having forsaken the true Islamic values as seen by the radicals.
I am not sure how much the Ummah affects this. The Ummah views the whole of Islam as a single nation, one people, and requires all Muslims to defend it against outsiders. This is why some Sunnis claim that Shiites are not Muslims and vice versa, allows them to ignore the Ummah.
Yes, the radicalisation is entirely due to the efforts of militant Muslims but any aggressive action by non-Muslims, or by the other kind of Muslims, is good propaganda for the process. There are always "angry young men" in any society (and a few angry young women?) but the deep seated value set in Islam makes it easier, perhaps, to tip them over the edge. It is this same value system that allows them to volunteer as suicide bombers, their individual survival is as nothing compared to the fate of the true people of Allah!
This is something that is hard to fight from the outside and may cause a blood bath if fought internally. Syria is blood bath enough. Such people may have visions and aims that extend beyond their own lives and will therefore ensure there is a good supply of warriors for the cause in the pipeline. IS is changing, in places, into a true state with an administration, services, industry etc. - for those in favour at least. That is perhaps the greatest danger, others seeing them as a, sort of, legitimate authority. Hezbollah did something similar in Lebanon.
Saudi Arabia, with its Sunni allies, could almost certainly put an end to the conflict but at a huge cost in other ways - almost certainly a war with Iran. Saudi Arabia are, at best, poor allies for us, I get the feeling that the West is the lesser of two evils for them, tolerated mainly because it buys their oil and supplies much of their arms and luxury goods. But there is a deeply stratified society there and the under-dogs are ripe for radicalisation.